Sunday, January 22, 2006

Down With Pants!

For those of you not in the know, and I suspect that would be most of you, today is No Pants Day. Or at least it is according to the people following this site. It's not quite the same as the tradition that some of my friends followed, but close enough

Yeah, you read the last sentence correctly. My friends have (had) the tradition of screaming "Down With Pants!" and this normally meant people would drop their pants. Woe to the poor sod who had a pair of tidy whities on. Or, you know, went commando that day. There would be great mocking for the lame underwear and potential snickering for the lame package.

The origin of this tradition, as best as I'm able to trace it, is Nov. 5, 1993. It was after a Spirit of the West show at the TSC and a group of us decided, suitably fired up by the booze, that it was time to perform our own act of rebellion against a tyranical government (A lot of people at MUN hated Clyde Wells pretty solidly at this point). While we didn't have the explosives to do in the Confederation Building, we did have fireworks. So it was a symbolic gesture of contempt towards the government.

So we go to the hill, hide a bit out of the way while the pyromaniacs (engineers, if I recall) set up the fireworks. One of the party wanted to help with the explosives, even though he was quite drunk. When it was decided that this was a tremendously bad idea, he staggered up to the highway meridian in front of Confederation Building and screamed "Down With Pants!" and then promptly dropped his.

Alas, it was a commando occassion for him (Who shall go nameless on this blog, as he is a Professional these days).

So we're trying to launch fireworks without being caught, we have a pantsless man screaming at Confederation Building while cars honk at him on their way past and we're trying to debate exactly who goes out to the meridian and drags him away,

It all worked out in the end. The pantsless man was successfully removed, the fireworks were launched and no one was caught. A pretty good evening over all. And, of course, "Down With Pants!" became both legend and tradition.So while January 22 is the wrong day of No Pants Day, I can understand why it wasn't held on November 5. It does get over-shadowed by other events.

So whereever you are today, feel free to go without pants, or drop them to show your contempt of government. Or to show off your underwear.

I won't be, though. It's -41 with windchill in Iqaluit today. That's a bit too nippy to be wandering about without pants.